Son of a Timelord Part 1
by Cecelia Moran
Summary: The saga begins in a small town in Washington: Will a 13-year-old girl prove to be more valuable to Edmund than he originally thought? And why does this American know him so very well?
1. The Runaway

_A/N:** I do not own Edmund Pevensie, nor the TARDIS, nor Narnia, nor the Doctor, those all belong to either the estate of C. S. Lewis, or the BBC. **Now, I need to tell you all that this story will make very little sense unless you choose to follow me for what I assume will be many years. Suffice it to say Edmund was picked up by the Doctor in his ninth incarnation before the episode **Rose** and after the end of **The** **Voyage of the Dawn Treader.** Also, this chapter was not beta read by someone other than myself so excuse mistakes and anyone who would like to beta read following chapters is free to ask, though do so at your own peril. Edmund is meant to look like Skandar Keynes, the actor who portrayed his character in the most recent films, you may imagine the other characters any way you wish. I also do not claim to know the names of the controls within the TARDIS, but I made an attempt at describing her in flight and I hope it is not absolutely horrid. Please read and review and enjoyment is optional, but preferred._

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><p>Edmund cut three more wires before replacing the panel cover, fairly sure he had just sabotaged the whole tracking system. He glanced over his shoulder one last time, not sorry to be leaving the dark, dingy interior of this TARDIS, he could go off on his own, he'd watched the Doctor (he would not think of that man as his father) often enough to know how to operate it, though he'd never seen the inside of the Type 70, but he'd taken the key.<p>

He started off on a sprint down one of the winding halls, going off the map he'd memorized, twisting down right, then left, and left again... and there it was, old and new and the most beautiful tone of blue in the universe. He loved it.

With a trembling hand, Edmund pulled the key from his pocket and unlocked the door. He hesitated a moment, pulling back and eighth of an inch just before his fingers touched the handle. _Are you a coward?_ part of his mind asked, _like your __**father**__? _That was all the motivation he needed. He grasped the door handle and pushed it open, stepping over the lip of the doorway with a determined look on his face. Of all the things he may become in the future, he would not be like the man who called himself his father.

The Type 70 was magnificent, though much different than the Type 40. The control panels were in a wide circle, following the contour of the walls, only small breaks for doorways and one spiral staircase leading up to a balcony with even more doorways. There was also a circular three-dimensional display at the center of the room, its own controls surrounding its darkened screen. Lights flashed on the pristine though long untouched controls, beautiful and irresistible.

Suddenly the PA system crackled to life and a voice played over the audio: "Edmund, come back," the thoroughly British voice pleaded.

"Like I ever would," he said, flicking a few switches and pushing the fortified time accelerator to maximum, but he had yet to release the throttle. "You aren't my father."

"Edmund, you can't fly the TARDIS!"

"Just you watch me." He punched in a random date, May ninth, 2012, perhaps he could escape there, learn about the world and keep running, run wherever whenever. Without another thought, he released the throttle and felt the floor shift beneath him, rocking so harshly that he fell backwards into the center panel. On insinct, Edmund pulled himself up and dragged back the atom accelerator, trying to calm the tremors.

Of course this was impossible, he realized a minute later, it took nine people to fly her properly and there was just him. _Just me now_. He did what he could, avoiding the flying sparks, pulling levers, and throwing switches until she finally made her final odd, whirring-slash-whooshing sound and fell silent.

Edmund took a deep breath and crossed the distance to the door, opening it to bright spring sunlight. He remembered he hadn't programed in a place of landing, he had no idea where in the bloody hell he was. He might not even still be in England for all he knew, but at least he'd only hopped seven years into the future, things shouldn't be too different. Most likely. Probably. Hopefully.

Sadly, when he stepped out he found the TARDIS had parked herself on the front lawn of a small house in a residential section. _Not much of a place to lose yourself_, he thought dejectedly. Edmund walked into the street and spotted a sign down at one end: 213th Pl. SW. No help at all, any number of streets could be called that in any part of the world. He knew he'd gone 66 years into the future in just a week, it should have been too much for him.

Edmund turned back to look at the house he'd parked in front of, a plain, grey colored single story with a door painted nearly the same color as the TARDIS which stood under the smallest of three huge maple trees that were lined up in the yard. The front drive was empty of all cars, but so were most of the ones he could see. Although, it had rained the night before and it was wet all over like nothing had been parked there all night at this particular house. His hand started to tingle annoyingly along with part of his chest and when he reached over to scratch his wrist, he felt a watch, a rather bulky one at that. Looking down at it, the numbers were scrolling over like a mileometer, after they stopped, the watch face read: 12:32 P.M. MAY 9TH, 2012, THURSDAY, BOTHELL, WASHINGTON, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, NORTH AMERICA, SOL: 3/EARTH.

The door of the house swung open and a girl dressed in pants made of a dark blue material and a short-sleeved v-necked white shirt came out and sat down in the doorway, leaning against the left side jamb. Her long brown hair touched the ground but she didn't seem to notice, she was staring at him, the way he was staring at her, but he couldn't help it, she was pretty, and odd. Someone her age should have been in school right now, it wasn't a holiday, the watch would have said so. Out of nowhere, a black cat walked out from behind the rhododendron under the window and climbed into the girl's lap and she didn't take her eyes off him as she began to pet it. Before he knew what he was doing, Edmund was heading up the lawn pushing away tree branches until he reached the worn stone path that curved around the home-made planter from the front door to the driveway.

"Hello, Edmund," the girl said, her American twang dulled by the flow of her speech.

"How do you know who I am?"

"Oh, Edmund, I know more about you than you do yourself." Something about her voice made him sure she was somewhat amused.

"Well, since you know my name," he began, closing the distance between them so he was standing over her, "You might as well tell me yours."

She seemed to think for a moment and then said, "Beth. The cat is Helena."

"Why would I need to know what the cat's name is?"

"You don't," she said, her voice now further tinged with amusement, "I just felt like telling you. It has been quite a while since I've had anyone to talk to."

"Well, then, back to my first question; how do you know who I am?" he repeated.

"As I said before, I know more about you than you know yourself. Like who your father is," she said. "Which is actually something you know, but refuse to acknowledge." Something about her seemed familiar, the gleam in her eyes, the curve of her mouth, the cadence of her voice...

"I _know _who my father is," Edmund snapped.

"Tell me his name."

"Robert Pevensie, my mother's name is Helen," he said, his eyes narrowing

"Wrong," she told him, standing on the lip of the door and lowered her voice to a whisper. "Your father has a name, but it burns in the stars, can topple mountains, raze civilizations to the ground and inspire fear at it's very mention."

"_That man _is anyone but my father!" Edmund sneered.

"You are so stubborn," she said, rolling her eyes.

"What?"

"Your father didn't ignore you, Edmund! Just because you never saw him doesn't mean he wasn't there. No matter how far you run you will never get away from what you wish to deny. Good people always return to their roots."

"Why would he do it then?" he said in a voice that must've alerted half the neighborhood to his presence. Elizabeth gasped and pulled him quickly into the house, locking the door behind them.

"What are you trying to do?" she hissed, "Get yourself killed?"

"Why would I get killed?" he asked, but not like he expected a good answer.

"Because there are ex-Torchwood agents here who don't like the way things are now," Elizabeth told him, "We need to get the TARDIS inside before they find it." Just as she finished speaking, there was a loud explosion outside and the two rushed back out, looking around frantically like the few other people still home.

"She's gone." Edmund turned to look at her and saw a huge grin spread across her face.

"I'll get my coat," she said, patting his shoulder as she turned and ran back into the house. A few minutes later, she came back out wearing a dark brown aviator jacket that looked like it should be too hot for the weather and a pair of grey-ish shoes in a style he'd never seen, but then again, it was unsettling for Edmund to see any girl wearing pants, so strange wasn't much of a stretch.

"Well then, Sherlock," she said, still smiling, "Where are we off to first?"

"You find this fun?" he asked incredulously.

"A lot of things are more fun than just sitting in that house all day, waiting for you to show up, this happens to be one of them."

"Why and how were you waiting for me?" Edmund starting walking down the street, to the left of the house.

"Because I knew when and why you were coming, funny how I decided you would show up on my sister's birthday."

"Yes, just curious, where is your family, you can't be here all alone."

"I am." Beth looked far past the houses in front of them, as if seeing into another world. "On January 31st of this year, I woke up and everyone was gone, my parents, my brothers, my sister, even our cats, just gone. I found out later that I had come through a complicated space time event from my universe to this parallel, where everything is just a bit different. That's how I knew who you were. In my universe, you were a story, the Pevensie siblings who found a fantastic world... I read the Chronicles of Narnia when I was a kid."

"Nobody knows about Narnia," he said, sounding rather subdued.

"I do, most children in my universe know the story, but all the attention is on Lucy's faith, Peter's anger and Susan's obvious romance with Caspian so you became my pet project."

"That sounds really strange, you know that, right?"

"I thought about that after I wrote it."

"You mean said it," he corrected.

"No, I mean wrote it," Beth replied brightly, "I've already written this conversation, even though that's kind of a paradox."

"I guess," Edmund assented, confused.

"Am I boring you?" she asked, looking over at him with a worried expression.

"No, just confusing me."

"Same thing, it's boring if you don't understand."

"Not always."

"You're just trying to keep me talking so you don't have to, but you don't need to, I know you're angry, you just never say. It hurts to be ignored."

"How do you know? _You_ knew who your family was."

"Yeah, but I was the youngest of all. Claire was the pretty one, the one everyone was crazy about, I was just... well, me." Beth had been leading the way for a while and by now they'd reached a newer looking group of uniform houses, the only difference being the doors they sported, unlike the older section her home was part of. "There it is." She pointed discreetly to a normal looking, three story house painted beige with the curtains pulled across every window. "The TARDIS is in there."

"How do you know?" he asked, still not sure about all of her hunches, they'd only just met after all.

"Believe me, I know, I wrote about it."

"Did you happen to write about how we got in?"

"Edmund, it's a house, not a government facility, there aren't as many options-" He cut her off.

"Oh my god! Can we get in or not!"

Beth looked slightly shocked and hurt when she said, "Yes. If we can climb up to the top floor, that is."

Edmund turned and a smile crept onto his face. "Well, I think we can." Elizabeth followed his gaze to a house down the street with a full grown ivy plant climbing all over one of the walls, probably strong enough to climb.

"You're kidding, right?" she asked worriedly.

"Why would I be?"

"I... we just met, of course you don't know, I mean why would you. I mean, I suppose it's so commonplace it's beneath mentioning..."

"Beth," he said, saying her name for the first time since they'd first exchanged words, "Don't tell me you're afraid of heights."

"Alright, I won't tell you."

He nodded, reevaluating. "This will be difficult."

"There's no other way, I'll climb it, I mean, only time I'm ever going to use meager rock climbing skills, right?"

"You don't have to come, I can do this alone," Edmund offered.

"No, Edmund, you can't, if I don't come with you, you'll probably end up dead or a lab rat."

"If I had a choice, I'd pick dead."

"Yeah, but you won't. They're just extremists, you know. Idiotic extremists, that is."

"Note to self: don't kill the misguided scientists, just hurt them."

"Fine with me, I'm not all too fond of Torchwood no matter what they're doing," she told him when they reached the vine.

"Well now," Edmund began, reaching up to find hand holds in the ivy, "This is where it gets interesting." She smirked when he wasn't looking, he had no idea.


	2. Torchwood

**Beth's POV:**

Getting to the roof wasn't as harrowing of an experience as I expected, what we had to do next was probably at this point the scariest thing I'd ever done. You see, I don't normally jump off buildings. Edmund of course did it like he was taking a slight jump off the curb on to the street, when he turned around to look at me I thought I could see him smirking, but it was a long ways away.

"Come on, I'll catch you if you slip," he said as quiet as he could with the distance between us.

I knew I'd written that I wouldn't fall less than a year ago, but actually doing it, that was a whole other story especially when I thought of how many times we would have to do it. I needed to trust him or the whole fantasy I had created at a time that felt like ages ago would shatter. Before I had time to think about it I thrust myself off the roof, locking my mouth shut as not to scream.

The feeling on impact was nothing like I expected, either, the breath knocked out of me as my hands rested on his chest. _He's going to have a bruise_, I decided because of the terror he put me through (though, in actuality, I put myself through it.) I rolled of him and he looked like he didn't want to let me go, which was a nice idea, but then again, he could just have been in pain, which was just fine with me, too. We climbed to the peak of the gable and slid to the gutter, both of us getting our hands scratched up in the process. This continued for the next five or so roofs until we came to the correct one and I hoped the plan I devised would actually work in reality, not just fiction.

We would have looked more than a mite strange to any passersby, him with one hand clutching the gutter and both feet braced against the wall and me with my feet braced against the gutter, holding on to his wrist (situated between my feet) with both hands. His other, free hand searched for a way to open the window. He looked up at me, pleading.

"The right breast pocket of your jacket," I said, rolling my eyes. He pulled out the object I knew to be a sonic screwdriver, but I recalled that he would not know in the least how to use it so I continued to speak, "Point it at the window, envision it opening and press the button." He obeyed and the whirring I had come to know and love was followed by the sound of a lifting latched. I smiled imperiously, knowing he was glad to have me with him. I knew he noticed my smirk and helped me through the window with a carelessness I had grown to love over the time I had written his character. He probably didn't realize just how well I knew him, his desires, his family tree, his likes, his dislikes, his fears... He took my hand and pulled me forward, squinting to see in the darkness since we had wisely let the curtains fall shut behind us.

"Edmund?" I whispered, enjoying the sensation of his hand around mine.

"Yes?"

"Do you trust me?" He needed to because to get the TARDIS back, we needed to get caught.

"Yes." The word sent shivers down my spine. I let my hand travel up his arm to his shoulder which gave me a pretty good idea where his mouth was, but I would have to pull him down to my level.

The air around us electrified as soon as our lips met. For a second I guess he was so shocked he didn't respond, but my patience was rewarded as he started to react, pulling me closer and lifting me off the ground to his height. Again, all the feelings were more intense since they truly existed in reality, not just my fictions.

Edmund seemed to be everywhere, filling my senses as we kissed. I felt one of his hands wind into my hair while the other kept hold of my waist. "Beth, what are we doing?" he asked against my lips.

"Just trust me," I whispered, doing my best to use his shoulders to support my weight (a great deal less than it had been before in my universe I might add) instead of his one arm, though I'm sure he was quite capable of holding me up for the needed amount of time. I'd been kissed before, a boy from my old junior high had been awarded the honor of that first. Chris had been, I suppose, a good kisser for his age (which was, truth be told, twelve), but he didn't hold a candle to Edmund. I was thinking about what it might feel like to be French kissed when the light flicked on.

"Well, well," a condescending female voice said, "What have we here?" Edmund pulled away from me faster than should be humanly possible and dropped me unceremoniously back on my feet before my slow human brain could register the end of the sensation. The woman had short blonde hair that reminded me of a politician (very Hilary Clinton) and though her eyes were a hazel color they were cold. In her hands she held a box I knew was a scanner, but I'll be damned if I knew how it worked. Her eyes widened and lit up, fixing on Edmund. "Amazing," she breathed, tainted wonder lighting her face.

A man came up behind her and took in the situation, a smile turning up the corners of his mouth. He looked at me as one would look at a child, "Miss, I think it might be best if I show you out."

"And let you turn yet another free-willed person into a lab rat? No dice, sunshine." To say he was surprised is a slight understatement, he looked utterly shocked.

"Looks like we'll have to wipe her memory," the woman said, stepping closer.

"Meghan," I began, enjoying her look of astonishment at her name, "Do you really think it's that simple?" My tone was playful and slightly patronizing, the exact thing to provoke Meghan Stark into taking us to the same place the TARDIS was. I smiled as I felt my plan fall into place.

Miss Stark advanced again and Edmund pushed me behind him. "Don't you dare," he growled, a fire lighting behind his chocolate brown eyes. It couldn't be that he cared for me so soon, it was more likely his instinct to protect the innocent, another indicator of his heritage and upbringing.

"I'd like to see you stop me, Timelord." Meghan obviously didn't have any idea where this Timelord had been through the course of his life and he took the challenge with a dangerous smile. He was part human, and a teenager, making him more volatile than the average man of his kind.

Meghan lunged forward and with little more than a flick of his wrist, Edmund sent her sprawling on the floor next to a table of what looked like surgical implements. Their existence caused an unwanted image of Edmund on the large, sterile table that dominated the space, his chest cut open as they explored how the two hearts worked and what would happen if one was taken away. Of course they would do it without the proper dose of anesthetic, the two hearts would get rid of it twice as fast, meaning he would still have some sense of them probing around inside of his chest cavity. The images made me shudder as they always did when pictures of such pain and horrid suffering entered my mind unbidden.

I grabbed hold of his left forearm. "Remember why we're here," I whispered.

"Might I inquire as to what you've done with the TARDIS?" he asked as if he had not just knocked some woman unconscious. Before the scientist could reply a voice floated up from the lower levels, a voice that could strike fear into the hardest of hearts. "Delete."

"Oh, joy," I said dully, "My first battle will be with a cyberman that's been out of commission since the sixties, fighting along side a Timelord who barely knows his own mind and a bunch of vigilante scientists who want to kill us." I was really scared to death since I knew exactly what would happen if we lost this fight.

"Come again?" Edmund twisted toward me, confusion evident in his eyes.

"Cyberman, it'll come to you, I promise," I replied, wondering if this was a promise I could keep.

"How does he not know?" the agent asked, bewildered.

"It's a long story," I told him truthfully, "Suffice it to say he's new at this." I grabbed Edmund's hand and pulled him past the stunned man into the hall.

"What are you doing?" he hissed, jerking his appendage from my grasp. I tried to keep myself from viewing the action as rejection, I had not done something that could be refused.

"Do you want your transportation back or not?" I asked shortly, wishing I was armed, then I ran back into the room from which we had come, stanching up varying sizes of scalpels. It was cliché and a little silly to expect myself to be able to stab someone with them or expect them to help with Cybermen, but it was just to make myself secure. Edmund had already reached the stairs so I ran to catch up with him, stowing my pseudo-knives in my pockets.

"Beth, just in case I don't know, you know how to deal with these creatures, don't you?" The tone with which the question was asked caught me off guard, it was the voice that belonged to the twelve-year-old who didn't know what to say to his siblings when he was finally found, the voice of the thirteen-year-old that felt undervalued by his family, the fourteen-year-old unsure of how to answer his geography teacher, the voice of the sixteen-year-old who didn't know how to commence with destroying some alien life.

"Well, I've got part of a plan," I dodged. I knew from his face he didn't completely believe me, but I truly did. It was the start of a plan, anyway.

_A/N: Sorry about the long wait in case anyone was waiting for this, but I had stuff I needed to do for school, severe cases of Writer's Block and a terrible case of Oh-My-Gosh-My-Story-Sucks-And-I-Should-Stop-Trying-To-Write-itis. Also, I had to read The Fault In Our Stars by John Green because I preordered a copy and then there was a Tour de Nerdfighting event, I had original stories I was trying to write and more school stuff. So, I'm sorry to say that these long gaps are to be expected and I apologize for, in my opinion, the awful quality of this chapter, I attempted to edit and I hope my kissing bit wasn't the worst, but for the record, it was written without experience. -Cecelia_


	3. Close to Home

_A/N: I'm so sorry it took three months and I'm sorry not much happens in this chapter, but the action is coming, I promise. Also, you can read the beginning of chapter five on my deviantArt, which I think I linked to in my profile._**  
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**Beth POV:  
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Downstairs there were people snatching up guns and others shouting that they should contact Torchwood headquarters in Cardiff, however this initiative was immediately shot down. Edmund asked me what exactly Torchwood was and why I had said "the new way things are" earlier.

"Torchwood was founded by Queen Victoria in 1879 after her encounter with the Doctor on the Torchwood Estate in Scotland. The organization was dedicated to the regulation and study of extra-terrestrials and keeping the world from knowing of the existence of aliens. In 2006 when Canary Wharf was destroyed, the location of the previous base, Torchwood was moved to Cardiff, Wales where it was rebuilt and re-purposed in the Doctor's honor by Captain Jack Harkness, a conman from the 51st century the Doctor first met during the London Blitz," I explained as I looked for the agent responsible for the awakening.

"How do you know all this?" he asked as he gingerly pulled a semi-automatic out of the hands of a small, trembling woman who was probably going to shoot someone if she kept it.

"That story is quite long and slightly embarrassing, so I'd rather not tell you and besides, it's irrelevant," I replied.

"Well, fine then, but let's talk to the gentleman wringing his hands in the corner."

We made our way through the chaos to the cowering man with gloves and commenced with questioning. "Were you experimenting on the cyberman?" Odd how the word rolled out of his mouth normally though he'd just learned about two minutes ago.

"Ye... Yes, I was," the man stuttered, wiping sweat from his forehead. "I didn't realize the electric stimulation would wake it, though! I swear!" he said quickly.

"He's right, I doubt the entire human race could generate enough of the right kind of power to awaken the creature," Edmund said, and this was, in fact, true.

"So there's more of them. Damn." The words were spoken by a man who looked suspiciously like a general. "Anyone know how to take down an army of cybermen?"

"Emotion overload," I muttered.

"Pardon me?" The three-Edmund, the soldier and the scientist-were all staring at me.

"Cybermen are essentially cyborgs, they used to be human and to some capacity they still have their humanity somewhere inside of them. After the human is, to use their vernacular, assimilated they lose all identifying factors, they pretty much forget who they are. Except it's really just certain parts of their brain being suppressed, but if you get rid of that and they realize what they are and try to reconcile it with what they used to be the mechanical operating system-"

"Shuts down because it can't handle the conscience," Edmund finished.

"Exactly, but how we would do that, I have no idea."

"Well, when I was experimenting," the scientist began, "I believe there was evidence that the cyberman was just one part of a single conscience."

"Right," I remembered now, "They're essentially one entity, carrying out orders from the cyber-king."

"What now?"

"The cyber-king, it's a huge cyberman controlled by one they have somehow pegged as exceptional. One walked over Victorian London on Christmas Eve, actually," I replied, smiling.

"So, if you take down the cyber-king, the whole operation falls apart," Edmund clarified, "But how are we going to do that?"

"More importantly," the soldier interjected, "how do you find it?"

"Well, I'm sure you have a radar going over this whole area, so look for signs of a lot of power coming from a single location," Edmund said as if it were obvious.

The soldier yelled to one of the other agents and then turned to introduce himself as General Lexington and followed that with saying, "I never thought my life would be in the hands of an E.T."

"I'm not fully Timelord," he replied, "My father was full, my mother half."

"I've never heard of a half Timelord," the scientist murmured wistfully.

"I'll tell you what," Edmund said pulling a sword off of a curiously conveniently placed rack of blades, his own weapon of choice, "If you don't try to kill us and we all live through this, I may be willing to give you a blood sample."

"Look, we're kind of running out of time," I prodded, motioning toward the display. "I know where that is, by the way." Edmund moved forward, gently nudging me out of the way.

"God," he breathed, surveying the different views.

"There aren't any volcanoes in England, are there?" I asked, smiling at the familiar sight of Mount Rainier.

"No, there aren't." He looked uneasy.

"Don't worry, the last eruption in the area was Mount Saint Helens in 1980," I said brightly, but tagged on some darker tidings, "Though, Mount Rainier is considered one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world.

"Then why the hell would the cybermen have their ship there?" he snapped, trying to recalibrate the search. I grabbed hold of his wrist.

"The volcano supplies them with power they can amplify over time to build the cyber-king, not to mention that no one ever goes into the mountain," the General said. "I think I can get us up there, but we need a plan of attack."

"Sabotage their technology, throw them into the lava," he said, "But in a more elaborate fashion with more than a few problems along the way because no plan goes off without a hitch."

"Sounds reasonable," I said, "Though, it might be good to give it a little more thought before we put it into action."

"Well, it's not like we have the schematics."

"Actually we do," the scientist piqued up, "I'm Dr. Wuest, by the way."

"Wait." I stopped him before we got any further. "You don't happen to have a daughter named Monstrociti, do you?"

He looked a bit shocked, "My niece, actually, but back to the point, I have some datastamps from the cyberman and I was able to scan its memory. I wouldn't be surprised if the schematics are there. However, I can't decrypt the data." Edmund and I exchanged a look.

"I think I know someone who can," he said with a smirk, "Where'd you put the TARDIS?" Of course, it wasn't liked they'd been able to do much with it since it was stolen and it was still on the badly reconstructed teleport pad in the next room. Once inside, I couldn't believe it was real. I had seen it in sketches and in my mind's eye, but never like this. I refused to touch any of it unbidden, but Edmund quickly set her to work decoding the cyberman's data. The display on the center console came to life giving us a three-dimensional view of the ship while the other screens showed data in Gallifreyan.

"So.. what have we got," he said to himself, beginning to manipulated the image, making it show the mountain surrounding it. Several minutes study showed that the best way to get in was to get inside one of the two craters and then try not to get burned to death before we opened a hatch leading into an old, disused duct system likely to be patrolled by cybermats, which probably aided greatly in adapting the heat energy of the lava for their use.

"How long would it take for us to reach the peak?" I asked, it wasn't like I'd ever climbed more than a rock wall.

General Lexington responded, "I can get us a helicopter, it won't take long, put actually into the crater will be a little more difficult and then getting out will be even harder."

"We can make it," Edmund said, almost vowing to get out alive.


End file.
